I've been programming computers in one fashion or another
since 1972. If you asked me what a red-black tree was I would
certainly give you my best impression of a deer in the
headlights on a moonless night.

On the other hand, I've probably written the algorithm
a bunch of times without any idea what in the world it
is called.

I would honestly say that 95% of my programming skills
were learned through the school of hard knocks. Some of
that I'll confess was by stealing
copying other folks' code and tearing it apart to see
what made it tick.

My sum and total college experience was had first ehen I
was at sea in the US Navy when they sent college profs
out to us and suit cased the courses in. English Lit
and math were what they brought to us. Then after I got
out I took two more semesters of calculus and three
semesters of computer science. That's it folks. The rest
I learned by doing.

Perl I leanrned via a combination of "just
doing it", reading many books and articles in
trade journals (including nifty stuff from merlyn)
and fine tuning at the hands of the Monastery.

I say all that to say this: folks who can walk the
walk can't always talk the talk. They still know what
they are talking about, but they just don't speak your
language. I've interviewed many "bright kids"
over the years that could talk the talk and sounded
really good but were absolutely lost when shown a real
piece of code that wasn't out of a college text book.